Tackling the attendance crisis
Bridget Phillipson, Shadow Secretary of State for Education, sets out how Labour would improve attendance at school. The SEA responds.
No More Sticking Plasters
Welcoming some of Bridget Phillipson’s ideas to improve attendance and her recognising that child poverty has a huge impact on schools, James Whiting SEA General Secretary argues that the current configuration of schooling itself is a major factor in shocking levels of absence. It needs a radical rethink.
There is little doubt that the two main factors in the worrying decline in attendance at school are child poverty and the recent ideological shift which has taken place in curriculum, assessment, pedagogy and behaviour policies in schools. This led Simon Jenkins in the Guardian recently describing experience at English secondary schools as “Dickensian”. Many schools are no longer enjoyable places to be for pupils and teachers. If they were, then attendance rates would be high and the recruitment and retention of teachers would not be in severe crisis.
The pandemic no doubt exacerbated the situation as attendance habits were broken but the increasing trend in persistent absence has been evident since 2015 at 17.3% increasing to 19.1% in 2019. Over the same period severe absence rates where children miss 50% or more of schooling increased by 64%. Now since the pandemic severe absence has soared by 133.6% affecting 2% of the school population. Persistent absent (where pupils attendance falls below 90%) is now affecting almost a quarter of all pupils at 24.2%
.Evidence that child poverty is a major factor in school attendance is inescapable. Bridget Phillipson in her recent speech is now recognising it as a major barrier. The above chart shows this relationship clearly with the gap between pupils entitled to FSM and others growing. Furthermore, the most deprived local authority in the country Knowsley registers the highest persistent, severe and unauthorised absence rates in the country. Since 2010 child poverty has increased from 3.6 million in 2010 to 4.2million in 2022, 29% of all children. This increase has been in line with the increase in absence from school.
The changes that have taken place in schooling since 2010 have been far reaching. Cuts have taken their toll with real levels of spending per pupil decreasing by 4% since 2010. The failure to recruit and retain teachers is affecting the quality of education pupils experience and this failure, as 15,000 UK teachers each year are snapped up by schools abroad, is linked to the pressures the system puts on teachers which are then passed on to pupils. At various points in a pupil’s schooling testing or examinations label a proportion of pupils as failures. The majority of pupils who are declared not to be ‘secondary ready’ after failing Key Stage 2 SATS are disadvantaged. GCSEs have a built-in failure rate of 38% to prevent ‘grade inflation’ and again the majority for pupils not making the cut are disadvantaged. Together with a curriculum based on how the private sector prepares their pupils for top universities, there is an examination system which sorts children into categories of success or failure.
Back in the early part of the century I visited the outstanding Robert Clack School in Barking. Sir Paul Grant, the head was a pre-Gove proponent of a knowledge based academic curriculum for all. I was surprised to see BTEC courses on his key stage 4 offer. When I asked why he responded ‘Everyone needs to be successful at something’. Most disadvantaged pupils are being denied that opportunity by the current set-up and instead are being labelled as failures. It is unsurprising then, that as secondary schooling progresses more and more of them are voting with their feet.
In her speech Bridget Phillipson perhaps wisely does not mention behaviour, an area the Tories always like to emphasise. There are signs that the joyless diet pupils are now experiencing is leading to some academy trust introducing harsh tightly managed behaviour policies which staff are rebelling against. The Astrea trust in Cambridge where strike action over unworkable behaviour policies has taken place is an example. Rather than pupils enjoying learning and being partners in it, the intention is to cow pupils into submission with draconian sanctions for the smallest infringement. A child in temporary accommodation sharing a room with two others and an adult, who can’t find a pen in the morning, is more likely to take a day off than face the humiliation of an equipment inspection and the consequent detention.
The curriculum review Labour is committed to is very welcome. In curriculum design at a national level there are careful balances to be created. The needs of the economy and the development of knowledge and skills to function in it on the one hand and the needs and interests of the individual child, is one such balancing act. There is also the balance between national, local, school and teacher concerns. Currently, the national curriculum which arguably does not serve the needs of the economy either, leaves little room if any for the needs of the individual learner. It is a centrally imposed set of knowledge. Variation is strongly discouraged even in SEND and alternative provision settings. Whereas alternative provision used to be about finding something a pupil enjoyed and could be successful at, it is now more about managing behaviour and addressing ‘mental health’ issues. How the curriculum, assessment, pedagogy and behaviour policies might be contributing to mental health problems is never considered. Bridget Phillipson referring in her speech to the need for schools to be ‘inclusive and welcoming’ could be a sign of a shift in thinking.
The following are solutions Labour is offering with a commentary.
1. Counsellors in every school to tackle mental health issues.
Many are already in place and more could be a valuable resource for schools in the current context. However, this initiative treats the symptoms not the causes many of which lie in child poverty, the current configuration of education in England and the pressures it puts on staff and pupils.
2. Free breakfast clubs
Chaotic families in poverty find it difficult to get children to school on time as it is. Some schools have these already and it would be useful to know the impact on attendance. It is not clear whether the intention behind them is to counter child poverty or promote the growth agenda by providing childcare for working parents/carers. If it was about the well-being of children in struggling families then the focus should be on a providing a decent daily hot meal. Breakfast is more likely to be made up of processed cereal, processed bread and spreads with high sugar content.
Breakfast clubs could be a useful addition to provision, but from the child poverty/welfare point of view universal free school meals look to be a better way of improving attendance. For some children they are the only hot meal of the day and if the allowance could be increased then genuinely nutritious and healthy meals could be produced. There are examples of schools growing their own food, and tapping into local producers rather than the corporate processed food companies. Free school meals for all could become local community wealth building projects which the children themselves could participate in. Sadiq Khan, the Welsh government and other local authorities are already delivering. Labour nationally should follow suit.
3. Putting schools back into the hearts of their communities, establishing trust and partnership
We welcome this aim. Parents are more likely to build trust in a school which reaches out to its community. MATS, though, are currently designed to compete against each other across the country like car dealerships. They should be dismantled, but in the meantime strong powers for LAs, plus funding conditions should be used to ensure they are as responsive as possible to the communities they serve and that they work together with other providers for community benefit. Similarly, partnerships cannot be just wished for. Mechanisms and democratic structures need to be in place for them to happen. Labour should implement partially elected governing bodies in all schools, parents/stakeholder forums in local areas etc
4. Linking Up Services A good move
5. Home school register another good move opposed only by mad libertarians in the Tory party
6. Speech and Language support in early years. Presumably this is to be targeted on children who need it. A strong proposal to lessen the need for some individual SEND plans and improve progress of some children. Unsure about the link with attendance though.
7. Annual checks for attendance and safeguarding by OFSTED How OFSTED would have the capacity to do this is not explained. They already inspect attendance as part of their 4 yearly inspections. The SEA has argued for local authorities to take on this role as they already conduct safeguarding audits of schools in their areas. They would be in a position to understand the particular problems facing each school. The reason for falling attendance is not because schools are not doing enough. They have already put in place first day calling home and much more. EWO support has been reduced and the Tories have asked schools to do even more with less e.g. hold parental contract meetings. Waving another OFSTED stick at schools, particularly after the Ruth Perry debacle, is insensitive in the extreme. OFSTED have already failed to pick up the peer on peer abuse occurring in schools revealed on the Everybody’s Invited website. Rather than imitate the macho Tory approach, Labour should agree to fund LAs to provide a comprehensive EWO service and research more deeply as to why so many children are becoming disenchanted with school particularly at the secondary phase.
Bridget Phillipson rightly accuses the Tories of just applying sticking plasters to try and overcome attendance problems. These are the result of the child poverty they have allowed to grow and the joyless education service they promote. I could say that her solutions are bandages with dressings. Much better, but they still do not address the underlying issues. It is very welcome that she recognises child poverty and the curriculum are factors. The malaise in our education service though is deeper. Alongside these measures as amended, the SEA would like to see a comprehensive child poverty strategy and a radical reframing of the education service to counter the disruption caused by the Gove/Gibb project.
Young SEA Curriculum Discussion At Portcullis House
The SEA has worked on its own curriculum statement which will be presented at this event. Dominic Wyse (UCL Institute)), Daniel Kebede (NEU) and Fabiha Askari (National Labour Students) willshare their ideas, with John Mcdonnell MP in the Chair You can sign up here.